


Les Jeux Sont Faits

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume III [1]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, Grimaud is a drama queen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-25
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 07:04:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4867634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Athos gone, Aramis returns to Olympus.  Will the gods be propitiated and give him what he wants?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Litochoro, Greece - 1629**

The boards beneath my feet were slippery with salt water, and the infernal creak of wood and rope pursued me in my sleep as I lay entombed in the casket of my cabin at night, trying and failing to dream of anything but death. Once again, I had reached a point where the mares of sleep were better than wakeful awareness. I had forgotten how the salt corroded my skin and how it etched itself into my lips. The odour of brackish water hung in the air and clung to my hair.

Grimaud, the eternal, the wandering Grimaud, stood silent, watching me with ancient eyes in his still-young face. My hands tingled and contorted into fists; my loins tingled and fury boiled over into my throat; my fangs tingled and I tasted blood. Grimaud, the eternal, the wandering, the _mocking_. My body urged me to rip open his throat, but I mustn’t.

I could smell his blood pump under his skin. I had smelled it once before: the night when he hunted me down in my cell in Chartres. He slunk in, the picture of subservience with eyes that bore the same expression of heathen insolence that I had so loved about Athos. He didn’t speak until I addressed him, and then he bowed, strode across the room and threw a bundle on my bed. It fell open and a horrified cry tore from my throat.

Athos’ hand rolled over the bedsheets. The wrist was black-blue, bruised where it had been severed from the arm, encrusted with dark brown blood. Its scent assaulted my tongue and made my eyes water.

“Kyrios is dead,” Grimaud said in the ancient tongue that I had never heard him use before.

“Did you kill him?” I hissed through clenched teeth. My wrath paralysed me so that I could not strike him down.

“No,” Grimaud build his words from chips of ice and rammed them into my ears. “You did.”

I struck him. Slapped him so hard that he stumbled back into the wall, and then he lifted his head, wiped the blood off his split lip and licked it off slowly, looking me straight in the eye.

“I know how to bring him back,” he said. “If that’s what you want… Monsieur l’abbé.”

That was how I found myself on board ship in Grimaud’s company; Porthos had sailed off into married bliss and I never told him that Athos had… that Athos was… Mount Olympus rose from the morning mist, its parched slopes like the folded wings of an ancient behemoth.

We waded hip-deep through ferns. The day was hot and sweat clung to my skin and clothes. My head was clear and blank, as if an icy wind had swept through my skull and blown away all thoughts that burdened me. My veins were empty and arid. I had not replenished them in days, weeks perhaps. Time meant nothing. I did not know when I had set off for Greece. I did not know how long I had travelled. Grimaud, the wandering Grimaud, had been my guide, leading me up, up, up, over rubble and rocks. Thorns clawed at my clothes, the sharp blades of grass cut the skin of my hands. I glanced down when I smelled blood: it was my own, pearling through a scratch across the back of my hand. I licked it off and looked up at the celestial vault that gaped open above the Holy Mountain. The white-hot face of Helios turned towards me and I could have sworn I saw him smirk and wink.

I stopped and drank deeply from the canteen that hung by my hip. The water was tepid, warmed by the rays of the sun and my own body heat. Grimaud stopped too, without turning to look at me. Had he been eating or drinking anything since we’d started the climb? I couldn’t remember. His bag held the cake we would sacrifice to Hera. Basilisk eggs and asphodel honey. Berries of the chaste bush and belladonna. Mandrake and the holy herbs: parsley and myrtle and asphodel.

My blood. The blood of the revenant. The gods relished it, I remembered.

I remembered.

It had been funny in those days, hilarious even. I remembered laughing about it with Athos, giggling like lunatics as we staggered through the thin air drunk on the wine and on each other. We had invoked the gods, and they had descended from the celestial plane to frolic, feast and fuck with the immortals.

The celestial disc above my head shifted as clouds rushed past, driven by Notos’ scorching breath. My world tilted off kilter, and I staggered momentarily, struggling to find my land legs. Last time I climbed this mountain, I had been intoxicated. I was stone-cold sober now, my brain a block of ice, within which chips of thoughts and memories were frozen like flies in amber.

It had been hilarious then, stumbling drunkenly through the permanent haze, fed on ambrosia and _ichor pure_. Had Silenus and his merry band of satyrs and maenads romped through the viridian meadows, trailing vines, pregnant with grapes, behind his donkey? I remembered nudging Athos and pointing at the Goddess of the Plague as she attempted to ascend the astral plane, which the Dodekatheon so jealously guarded and in which they had welcomed us but not the minor deities.

Were those memories or were they dreams?

Had I truly seen the God of Regrets feed his goats? Or had he been a vision conjured up by the herbs of Hera’s cake?

I shook my head to dislodge the frozen snippets from where they had wedged themselves into my mind. The world around me came back into focus and I saw Grimaud disappear behind a boulder, as he carved his way through the undergrowth on the narrow path.

We neither slept nor rested on our way to Peak Stefani. The path curled around a sheer cliff and spat us out onto a plateau. The Throne of Zeus loomed before us, and I saw the dark streaks where Athos’ blood had etched itself into the white stone. I blinked. No, that had been two hundred years ago; his blood had long been washed away, any trace of his presence had been eradicated.

I dragged myself to the altar and fell to my knees before the majesty of the ancient gods. My head and heart rebelled against prostrating myself in a place where I had walked proud and admired two centuries ago. Unlike Athos, who had considered the return to his parental home an act of regression, I had enjoyed the adventure of walking among gods, as their equal. They were not omnipotent, those Hellenic deities, but they were immortal, and I fascinated them. That did not surprise me: I was new. I was different. I fascinated myself.

I knew now how Athos must have felt, coming back to a place where he had never been his own man. I was a supplicant, bending my head before gods that were not mine, even as the cross around my neck burned itself into my skin. Grimaud watched me, silent like the grave. His eyes gleamed with Olympian light.

I pulled out the urn with my lover’s ashes from my satchel. “Hear me, oh Thunderous Father,” I whispered without lifting my eyes to him. “Oh Merciful Mother, remember his punishment and honour your promise."

I looked at Grimaud. “Will it work?” I asked with pale lips.

The Watcher’s face remained passive. “Of course, Master Aramis.” He smirked, and I understood why Athos used to thrash him. “Unless you fuck it up.”

***

There was a man sitting under the orange tree, with his eyes closed and his legs folded under him, his face bore the expression of simultaneous presence and absence, and I thought, “Here is a man who knows all there is to know.”

His eyes opened as he heard my approach and his lips smiled at me as if we had been friends all our lives.

“What do you seek, son of Zeus?” the man asked.

“Jesus of Nazareth,” I replied.

“To what end?” the man asked.

“To the end of punching him in his teeth.”

“What have his teeth ever done to you?”

I sank down onto the grass next to him, lifting my eyes up to the tree where orange blossoms altered with orange fruits in a ceaseless cycle so that the tree would simultaneously appear to be in full bloom and in full fruit. I blinked and the tree was barren and the blossoms fell all around me. But when I blinked again the tree branches were pregnant with fruit.

“There was a man,” I said, watching the tree as if it spoke only to me. “And Jesus and I have unfinished business.”

“It isn’t Jesus you have unfinished business with, son of Zeus,” the man said and extended a fruit from the orange tree to me.

“You’re right,” I said taking the fruit from him and watching it turn to rot and back in my hand. “I could have appealed to Zeus for justice.” It was easy to speak to the man; I felt as if he was simultaneously within and without me at once. He was not Greek, nor was he a god, yet he was all these things and more. I had never met anyone quite like him before.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I deserved to be punished.”

“And what will you do when you’re resurrected again?” the man asked.

 _Don’t bring me back._ I remembered telling my Grigori that, although I couldn’t quite remember why. There was a man. He had hurt me. And I needed to punch Jesus in the face for it.

No, he wasn’t a man. He was something else entirely. I loved him; he had broken me.

No, that was also not right. Eris had broken me.

“I will not be resurrected again,” I said, once my thoughts settled, and handed the eternally regenerating fruit back to the man.

His name was Siddhartha Gautama and he wanted to bring an end to the suffering of all sentient beings.

“Will you teach me?” I asked him.

“The first lesson you must accept,” Gautama said, “is that change is inevitable. Once you learn to accept that, we can move on to the next lesson.”

“What’s the next lesson?” I asked.

“We will speak then of your sister, Eris.”

“τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν: all entities move and nothing stands still,” I said quoting Heraclitus.

“Yes, you’ve intellectualized that. I want you to meditate on it. Until you have freed yourself of your fear of it. Until it has no power over you. Until your heart can no longer be broken.”

There was a man. I had loved him. I had lost him. It was change I did not accept. I wanted to keep walking into him as into a river, unchanged and unchanging.

For all the shades in Hades, I could not remember his name. Nor, for that matter, my own.

“How do I do that?”

“Sit with me, son of Zeus. I have much to show you.”

***

A sacrificial cake was baked to be burned, not eaten. The last time we came here, Athos and I defied the gods in thought and in deed (oh gods, _in deed!_ ). We had destroyed the sacrifice, and it was perhaps only thanks to Hermes, who appeared to harbour real affection for his wayward half-brother, that we escaped Olympus unscathed, albeit not untouched.

I lifted the urn on the altar. I longed to press my lips to the smooth brass, but I sensed the Watcher’s presence as he hovered behind me, my personal nemesis. For a creature bound to his Kyrios in eternal devotion and loyalty, Grimaud had gained suspiciously much amusement from… this. My thoughts strayed back to that fateful day: the way Grimaud’s eyes gleamed with preternatural fire; the way he palpitated with glee when he announced Athos’ death like a warped Angel of Annunciation.

“You broke his heart, Master Aramis.” Grimaud was watching me closely as his lips formed poignard-shaped words. “You knew what would happen when you left him. His body is even now cooling in his bed in the inn.” Both our gazes trailed to the severed hand on my bed. My blood was like ice water in my veins. Grimaud, the eternal, the wandering, the watching… Why had I never watched _him_?

It was on that day that fragments fell into place to form a gruesome picture. _You will never see me die. You will not be there to bring me back._ I had never understood – for Athos had never elucidated – the finality of his death. He was my rock. He was my god: firm, unyielding, eternal. He had survived the sea, for he had never died in it. His soul had not travelled to Stygian shores, it had been trapped in the vessel of his body in Poseidon’s marine realm. The damage to his body had been a mere trifle.

This death, the real death, the ultimate death had ripped him from this world and carried him into Elysium, where he had taken his place among the demigods and Heroes, as was his due. There was a way to bring him back – if Hera’s curse was still as strong as it had been millennia ago.

If however she had forgiven him… For the first time I prayed for the Goddess of Marriage to be as vengeful and unrelenting as in days of yore.

Athos’ immortality was tied to Hera’s curse. If she had forgiven him, if she had lifted the curse, the sacrifice would mean nothing.

A dagger flashed in Grimaud’s hands. It was not he who had followed me to the realm of the old gods: it was I who had followed him. He wanted me to bring his Kyrios back, and if my sacrifice failed-

I glanced at the dagger gleaming like Zeus’ own thunderbolt in the Watcher’s hand.

If my sacrifice failed, the Watcher would sacrifice me.

The blood of the revenant soaking the altar of the gods. That would stir the Old Ones’ blood. That would push them tumbling into a _delirium gaudens_. I would die here, forever. Athos' soul would be released, his body would be restored. And if the gods didn’t accept this sacrifice, either, I would not return to live without him. My flesh would disintegrate as long as the dagger stayed embedded in my skull, for who would pull it out? Who would find me on the throne of stone beneath the gaping mouth of the Olympian haven?

My hands clasped around the urn, I knelt before the altar and pressed my forehead to the stone, from which tendrils of cold seeped into my skin and bone and slithered into my brain.

I rose to my feet and sat the cake on the altar. “Let us begin,” I said. “Let’s burn a cake.”

***

“To truly escape _samsara_ ,” the Buddha said, “you must learn to see things as they really are. You must learn to let go of ignorance, craving, and clinging.”

In Elysium, under the orange blossoms that turned repeatedly into orange fruit, I thought I could see things as they really were. I saw that I was trapped only by the limit of my own ambition. I saw that I could set myself free.

In this ethereal land of demigods and Heroes, of pomegranates and asphodel, Discord could not touch me. I was happy. There was no more pain, no more doubts. No more love. No craving and no clinging. I was not myself. I belonged to this paradise.

And then - suddenly - I was torn from it.

I choked on the waters of the Styx as they closed over me. My head spun and my gut rebelled against me. My limbs flailed and the waves had pulled me under, only to toss me out on the other side.

I struggled for air with an anguished gasp.

Above my head, the cerulean Aegean skies opened up to my unfocused gaze and Helios beat down upon me with merciless rays. My lungs hurt. My limbs strained in vain to move. I did not remember who I was, nor what I was doing there. I tried to scream, but nothing came out but a dolorous whimper.

And then, three thousand years of memories poured into my head, and I had finally found the voice to scream. This had happened to me before, but I haven’t been resurrected this way in over two thousand years. I had spent a long time protecting my heart, building wall after wall around it, only to let _him_ smash it all to smithereens. The demon I loved, the man who broke me. I couldn’t remember his name, but I could see his face, looming before me in every dimension.

The memories poured in, splitting my skull with piercing pain that radiated down my neck and made my limbs tingle with helplessness. The last time I resurrected, the pain didn’t last for long. But then again, I had a lot more past life to reabsorb this time around. I tried to let go, to remind myself that this pain too was transient, _everything changes_ and so would I. I forced myself to take deep breaths and cast about for my Grigori.

My Grigori. He had disobeyed a direct order I had given him. Why would he do such a thing, the middling gnat? He had torn me from Elysium and thrown me back into _samsara_.

A cool hand was on my forehead, a cool cloth pressed to my throbbing temples, against my parched lips. The cool rim of a glass. Wine. I spat it out, still blinded by the sun. What was it about that taste of fermented grapes that now made me think of death? I pushed blindly at the hand that held the cup to my lips and asked for water.

A shadow fell over me, blocking the relentless sunrays out, and a familiar voice pronounced, “Welcome back, Kyrios,” in my native tongue.

“You scoundrel!” I spat out in the same tongue. “I forbade you to do this. This cannot be the will of the Gods.”

“I only serve one,” the gnat replied and I saw another cup appear in his hand, this time with water, which I drank down greedily.

“You’d do better serving him if you actually heeded his commands,” I said and was immediately felled by the splitting headache again.

I roared in agony. It didn’t quite hurt as much as when my heart burst in my chest, but the pain was paralyzing nevertheless and I fell back upon the rock on which I had awoken. I recognized the altar at the feet of Zeus’ Throne.

That’s when I realized that there were two pairs of hands on me, not one. Another voice had called out my name, as if summoning me fully from my ashes.

“Athos.”

My eyes flew open again and I tried to focus on that face. That face. The same face. Eternal beauty creased now by worry lines. My hand feverishly clenched around his wrist, so narrow, so deceptively delicate.

 _You will never see me die,_ I had said a long time ago to him, at this very place, _I promise you that._

I remembered.

“Aramis.”

***

My own rebirth had been a torrent of agonies. Yet the moment I had crawled out of my grave, I had been myself again. Stronger and greater than ever before, my senses keen and alert and my body thrumming with energy of fire and earth. I had stopped for a repast on my way into a new life, and I entered it throbbing with the blood of a man who had bequeathed me his power.

Not so Athos. Grimaud and I led him down the meandering path, into denser air infused with the scent of salt. He was strong enough to walk in a somnambulism of unconsciousness, as his spirit still soared in realms that were not of this Earth. His skin was clammy and his pulse frantic, I sensed it through the layers of fabric into which Grimaud had clothed him after his return. My own heart was struggling to pick up the beat of his; it rattled within my chest and scattered feelings around like the gears and cogs of broken clockwork.

Within the mire that bubbled in my breast, one beacon of light guided me on my path. The _ignis fatuus_ of my life: my love for the pagan god. Grimaud had been wrong. I had never stopped loving Athos. I couldn’t.

I sent Grimaud away with a wave of my hand when we reached the house on the seashore, and he scurried out of the room, leaving me to put Athos to bed. Athos resembled a Grecian statue more than ever, white skin as cold as marble and his heartbeat so slow that even I could barely feel it. He was silent and still, and he was compliant. I motioned him into bed, pulled the sheets over him and wiped tangled strands of hair back from his brow and temple. His lashes trembled against the bruised skin and suddenly he opened his eyes and focused his gaze on my face. My heart swelled into my throat and my hand twitched, longing to caress those beloved contours of cheekbone and jaw. I didn’t dare touch him, my resurrected godling, and I didn’t know if it was his frailness or his majesty that filled me with awe. So much pain. His resurrection had been one of agony as his soul got slammed back into the restored body.

“Aramis,” he whispered, just as I whispered, “Athos.” A ghost of a smile illumed his wan features momentarily, a flash in the pan that faded away as his eyes fluttered closed.

“Sleep now.” I raised my hand and brushed the tips of my fingers against the side of his face. Skin and skull are so thin there, at the temple, where blood throbs the strongest. “I’m here.”

His mouth relaxed when Hypnos claimed him and his skin no longer looked taut, but soft and pliant. I fetched my handkerchief and mopped his brow, watching his chest move with soft inhales and exhales. He was so beautiful. I knew it, and yet it struck me anew now that I watched him after so long a separation. His beauty was perfect and absolute, in any century. The lines of his face had clearly been crafted by divine hands. His body, restored to its magnificence, he had entrusted to my care. Did that mean that Athos had forgiven me?

“I will never betray your trust ever again,” I avowed, as my fingers trembled against skin that resurrection had rendered delicate and tender. He had still loved me, my Achaean idol. Even as he was slipping away, he still loved me. He had drowned in the frozen lake of his own mind, but once again the waters had spat him out and returned him to me. I had fought the waves of madness and death with the fire of the sacrifice, and I had won. I would arm myself. For the future, I would arm myself with the flaming sword of Archangel Michael and wield it against the waters of despair when they threatened to engulf Athos again. _Nunc et in aeternum._ Amen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear commenters, we ♥ you! I would urge anyone to read the tangents in the comment threads (and to add to them, if you're so inclined).

Athos was gone the next morning, and my heart stopped. I had left him asleep, and when I returned to the bedroom, the bed was empty. I pressed my palm to the sheets where the warmth of his body still lingered and fought down the irrational panic that rose within my breast. No, he was not gone. Of course he wasn’t. Grimaud was still here, and Grimaud would not let him leave alone.

I closed my eyes and let my senses pick him up. The trail led me to the shore, and I watched Helios’ countless reflections in the tiny stones beneath my feet. The glare hurt my eyes and I had to blink against the darkness that always obscured my vision when I wandered in Helios’ presence for too long.

There it was, my beacon of light. I smiled when he broke through the waves like a beautiful marine creature and presented himself to my delighted gaze. His body, with its broad expanses of shoulders and back, the narrow hips that I knew would slot so seamlessly between my parted thighs. He tossed back his long black hair when he resurfaced, and my mouth went dry. Glittering waves danced around him like merry nymphs, and I wondered if Marie’s kin were admiring him from within the depth of the sea. When he turned around, I could see that he was laughing – the delighted, secret, almost serene laugh of a man caught up in a moment of unconditional happiness. And – oh, indeed. He was happy. My gaze had travelled lower and encountered the evidence between his thighs. At the sight of his cock slowly filling with blood, my own twitched in response and my feet carried me into the surf. I discarded my own clothes as I walked, relishing the way Athos’ eyes lit up with the familiar passion that rendered his gaze ebony-black. He made his way towards me, and the dancing waters broke against the firm muscles of his thighs and glittered around him like scattered diamonds.

“You look well,” I whispered once he stood before me. Rivulets of water ran down his shoulders and chest, over the hard planes of his stomach which shuddered with laughter still.

“Do I?” he said, and the familiar mocking tone of his voice sent a jolt to the top of my spine and trickled down to my loins.

“Yeah.” I reached out and touched the ridge of his collarbone, traced the line of his shoulder and arm, all the way down to his wrist. The wrist that Grimaud had mutilated. All was healed. All was forgot.

Did he _know_?

Had Athos retained any memories of what had happened to him when he was dead? Did he know that Grimaud and I had conveyed him to a secluded place in the country, erected a pyre and burned his body to ashes? From those ashes he had risen like the firebird, as magnificent as ever. I could feel the potency of his blood, his virility steam off him and I longed for a sip of that nectar that the gods had restored. 

A breath of wind swept through my hair and over my skin, and an invisible hand held me fast at the back of my neck. I stood transfixed; awash with light, the world around me was a dark tunnel, and at the end of it: divine light. _Athos_. He had led me to this place before, and it was on these shores that he had promised to bring me ambrosia. I had tasted ambrosia during our stint on Olympus, yet it paled in comparison for what I truly craved. My thirst was for the ichor of Athos’ veins, suffused with light and with lust and love. It had been too long since we had celebrated the Eucharist that bound us together. I had to take him now, to feed on the lifeforce that pulsed through him, to seal our covenant anew.

He must have read my desire in my face, for he smirked – that familiar heathen smile that lit up his eyes with Olympian gleam – and took a step forward. My breath arrested; within the span of a heartbeat, Athos’ hand would alight on me and then we would be tumbling down into the waves, entwined.

Athos stepped around me and walked out of the water. My heart froze within my breast and blackness closed in on me. It was only when I turned around and followed him, like I always would, even into death, that I found my vision restored. This world of celestial light blinded me. “Athos,” I said when I felt terra firma under my feet. “Don’t leave.”

Athos had stooped to pick up the discarded fragments of clothes that I had shed on my way into the water. “Here,” he handed me my shirt. “Cover yourself up before the sun burns you to ashes.” Within my head, a thunderous roll faded out all thoughts and feelings, all but one: did he know? How could he speak of burning to ashes when not long ago it had been his body that we had set aflame on the pyre?

But Athos remained entirely unmoved by the implications of his words. He threw the shirt over me and pulled it closed over my chest. Then, he took my hand. “Come,” he said. “Let me take you back home. This is not your world, little chyortik, I know that.”

My bedroo– his bedroom– _our_ bedroom was cool and dim, the curtains drawn and the bedsheets clean and crisp. For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder where Grimaud was getting the bed linen from. I had never watched the Watcher. I shuddered and cast a glance over my shoulder, as if expecting him to lurk in the shadows, silent like the angel of death.

There was no-one there, no-one but Athos and myself, and there was a bed a few paces behind him. All could wait. The thoughts and questions that bubbled up within me could wait. Athos stood before me, nude and wet, and his cock, so much more enticing for its semi-dormant, semi-aroused state, begged for attention.

He saw me looking and blinked, and in the next moment I was before him, sinking to my knees and digging my fingers into taut muscles, desperate to feel him in my mouth as he began to fill out to his full size. He was there in no time at all, as I knew he would be. His flesh so thick and salty and throbbing with blood, and I groaned with anticipation and desire. “Aramis!” His voice somewhere above my head and I raised my eyes to him, my mouth stretched around his cock and my senses full of the scent of his arousal. The potent throb of his pulse against my tongue, under my hands, in his groin. I sucked and his knees buckled. “Aramis,” he gasped, tugging at my hair. I let his cock slip out of my mouth and licked across the tip with the flat of my tongue. The taste of the ocean, his own and that of the sea herself, mingled on my tongue and I swallowed it greedily. I would swallow so much more. I would swallow his blood, later… later… _now_.

Self-control abandoned me and my fangs dropped. I stood, flashing my teeth at him in a feral smile, and lapped at the side of his neck, grazing his skin with my teeth. Athos grabbed me around the waist and yanked my head back. His eyes burned into mine, black and gleaming like embers, and he sucked in the heat that rose between us through parted lips.

“Please,” I said, staring into the fire that threatened to incinerate me. “Let me drink from you.”

My hand dropped from his hip to cup his prick and balls and he ground himself into my grip, holding me to him, staring into my souls.

Suddenly, his hands moved. It happened so fast, I barely knew how it was that I found myself face down on the bed and Athos was straddling me and holding me down with firm hands on my shoulders. I groaned and rammed my teeth into the pillow – a poor substitute for his flesh – but then his hands moved, down my back, to my arse, and he was spreading me with deft fingers. He spat, I felt it run down into my cleft, and rubbed it in, pushing his spit in with his fingertips. “Up!” Athos shoved one knee between my legs and lifted himself off me, pulling me up by my hips. “Let me see you.” A finger slipped into me and I moaned, immobilised by the weight of emotions that swirled through me. “So tight,” Athos murmured. “So tight around my finger. You’ll open for me, won’t you, little chyortik? When I push my cock into that tight hole of yours, you will spread your legs and your cheeks for me and you will keep still, like a good boy.”

My cock slapped against my stomach, ramrod hard and sticky. I thrust my hand between my legs, grabbed my prick and began to palm myself off as Athos’ finger continued to fuck me. My vision was black again, but I didn’t care, for every word that Athos spoke made light explode behind my closed eyelids. “So eager,” he continued, stroking me open with his fingers, with spit and with oil that he pushed into me with the pad of his thumb. “Your ass is hungry for my cock, Aramis.” Another finger, and he twisted them inside me to make lust explode in the pit of my stomach. “Isn’t it?”

I moaned, which he took for assent, for his fingers withdrew and the tip of his cock pressed up against me. “You want my cock?” I moaned again, but it wasn’t enough. “Tell me.”

“Yes.” I swallowed around my dry tongue and almost cut myself on my fangs. “I do.”

“You do what?”

“What?”

“What do you want? Tell me.”

“Your cock.” I pushed my hips back, determined to impale myself on him if he persisted in withholding it from me.

“Where do you want my cock? Aramis?” His hands around my hips were a steely vice.

Rage boiled over, flooding me from my very core to the top of my skull, the tips of my fingers. My hand clenched around my own prick and I spent myself messily over my hand and into the bedsheets. Behind me, Athos laughed. “Look at that,” he whispered. “Your ass is begging for it. Clenching as if it tried to suck my dick in. Do you want it, Aramis? Tell me.”

“Yes,” I panted, lightheaded with the force of my orgasm, “do it, Athos. Fuck me up the arse.”

A push, spreading me apart, and he reached for my hand, pulled it behind me and put it on my arse cheek. “Open up for me,” he said. He was breaching me slowly, carefully, halting every now and then to let me feel the thickness that filled me out. And then, his palm splayed over the small of my back, forcing me into an arch, he buried himself all the way in with a grunt as my hips rose towards him.

Athos leaned over me, sweat and water-soaked hairs brushed across my back and the heat of his skin scorched me. “I’m going to fuck you now,” he growled and licked my ear. “Do you think your ass can take it?”

“Athos,” I choked out, desperate to feel him with every nerve of my body. “ _Athos_.”

He laughed again, pulled himself up and grabbed my hips again. “I’m going to come inside you.” He pulled back and thrust in, driving me into the mattress. “Fuck back, Aramis.”

***

He lay in my arms, breathless and spent, the aroma of his body’s heat and perspiration settled over me like a comfortable blanket. He fit so well into my arms, but I suppose he always had. A strange puzzle I should have unlocked and left where I had found it. His heart beat like a hummingbird against my clenched fist over his chest, but I felt strangely calm, like the sea after a storm.

He turned in my arms, craned his neck and his lips pressed against my jaw in a gesture of spontaneous intimacy that touched me. 

“I love you,” he whispered to me in Greek, the original language of our love-making. The tongue of our fated love. 

He had said the right words and I felt them resonate within me. The reply was on the tip of my tongue. I knew the words, my instinct was to speak them, yet my tongue would not obey. Would not turn. My lips remained sealed. I felt his body tense and to relieve some of that tension, rather than speak, I pressed my mouth to the column of his neck, and there, underneath his heated skin, I felt his veins tremble. A shudder ran through his entire body and he had turned his head away from me, stifling a moan into the pillow even as I held him.

 _Beautiful demon who had destroyed me,_ I thought, _am I breaking your heart?_

With time, he slipped out of the bed and padded out to the beach on his soft, bat-like feet. Shortly, I followed him out to the surf again. The air was cooler now; the sun was setting. It was evident he was upset and I did not want him to feel that way. After all, he had brought me back, at likely a great inconvenience to himself (I recalled Aramis was never fond of baking). 

“So, what would you like to do now?” I asked. “Go back to France? Are you going to finally take being a Jesuit seriously?”

He turned about to face me as if stung by an asp. I replayed what I had said in my mind and found no obvious fault with my words or my delivery.

“Perhaps,” he replied cautiously. “What would you say to that?”

“That it’s about time, I suppose.” I shrugged and sat down onto the lingeringly warm sand. “You seem happy when you study the scripture.”

“The scripture?” The way he had repeated the word, one would think I had called it “demonology” despite the fact that I clearly had not. “And what would you like to do, Athos?”

“I have a lot of thinking to accomplish,” I mused. “I believe Bragelonne is still technically mine. I should like to return there. I have fond memories of that place.”

“What will you do in Bragelonne?”

I smiled up at him. “Grow tulips. Meditate.”

“Meditate,” he repeated, biting his lips. “On what?”

“Emptiness, mostly.” There was so much I wanted to tell him. “When I was in Elysium…” His brow furrowed. Did it also upset him as much as it upset me to think of being torn out of paradise? “When I was… dead, I met a very nice man, Aramis. I believe you would like him tremendously.”

“What man?” I could tell he was trying not to show his aggravation, still, at the mention of another man, he bristled.

“His name was Siddhartha Gautama.”

“You met the Buddha.”

“Found him, actually. Sitting under an orange tree in one of Persephone’s groves.”

“You literally _found_ Buddha.” I could tell by the way he held his lips that he was thinking about biting me again. Clearly I needed to change the topic for it appeared Buddha had the same effect on Aramis that Jesus had at some point had on me. Before I found Buddha.

“Nevermind that. How’s Marie?”

“How’s… what?”

“Is she well? Have you seen her? I don’t know how long I’ve been gone, you realize, and you seemed to care for her deeply, so I was merely asking…”

“Why… what…” 

I had no idea why everything I was saying somehow felt as if I was pouring lemon juice into his gaping wounds. Perhaps it was only the hyper awareness of suddenly being alive again. I had hoped with time it would settle.

“Marie de Rohan?” I said her name, in case Aramis was suffering from heat stroke.

“So now you can just call her that!” he exploded and my eyes widened.

“I had merely called her by her name,” I pointed out.

“So, she’s no longer ‘the Rohan nymph,’ is she?”

“Aramis, you’re my dear friend, and she was important to you. I don’t see a reason to disrespect a woman and a deity simply because I happen to not agree with some of her _modus operandi_.”

He veered on me. His fangs dropped and he was as hard as a rock when his body slammed against me. Well, that was unexpected. My own body responded immediately, our cocks clashing into each other like swords on the field of battle. It was not long since we had last done this, but if this was what Aramis needed in order to shake whatever darkness assailed him, then it was my duty as a friend to provide him that comfort. Besides, now as ever, I thought he was devastatingly beautiful.

He pressed me into the sand with his hips, his hand going right for my ass, kneading it with strong fingers, while his fangs reached for my neck voraciously. 

“No,” I shoved my forearm into his mouth instead, his teeth broke through my shirt but not quite my skin. He snarled like a wild animal against me, and I took that opportunity to flip him over and pin him to the sand with my own body. My hips pressed down against his, our cocks trapped by the heat and friction between us.

His eyes looked frenzied and his nostrils flared. He lashed out at me, determined to get his fangs into my jugular. I laughed as I grabbed his arms and pinned them above his head.

“Stop that, chyortik. I think we shall both have to learn moderation.”

“Let me have you,” he hissed, eyes glued to my neck, cock straining against my own.

“You force me to take desperate measures, Aramis, if you don’t behave.” He strained against me like a feral beast. The demon inside him was striving to come out and devour me, but I would not let him destroy me again. 

As quickly as I could without letting him up, I pulled my shirt over my head, balled it up into a tight gag, and shoved it right into Aramis’ mouth, his fangs clenching over the material in growing indignation. Surprisingly, his cock twitched and hardened even more underneath me.

“Yeah, you like that, chyortik?” I held him down with all my strength. He fought valiantly, but I had always been the stronger of us. “Look at you, writhing under me, not like a chyortik but a fully grown chyort. Maybe I should exorcise the demon in you with my cock.” It was the polite thing to do, after all he’d done for me here in Litochoro.

He moaned angrily into the gag and I laughed again.

“I know, you’re a fierce creature of the night. All the more reason to fuck it out of you.” I looked about the beach to see what else I could use to restrain him, and my eyes settled on some dock lines left in the sand. His eyes seemed to follow my own and then glowed with indignation as he read my intention. “Well, I don’t have to tie you up if you promise to behave.” The snarl into the shirt-gag was a definitive sign of ongoing rebellion. “Suit yourself.”

Pressed against my own, his cock twitched again. He was incredibly aroused by these developments, despite the fact that I was not letting him make a feast out of me. I grabbed the dock line and wrapped it around his wrists securely, while he emitted soft grunts of frustration against the improvised gag.

“You’re so beautiful like this, chyortik, all trussed up for me like a sacrifice.”

I ran my thumb over the throbbing vein of his engorged cock, loving how flushed it looked against his pale stomach. I gave his erection a few sure strokes until the beads of liquid pearled at the tip and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

“I’ll take care of you,” I promised. “I’ll give you what you want.” But not my blood. No, that he would need to learn to do without.

I flipped him over onto his knees and elbows and forced his thighs apart with my own. His hair was full of sand that shed its grains into my hand as I pulled on it. “Come here,” I whispered into his ear as I slapped his rear, readying us both so I could enter him. His neck craned, so long, so gorgeous, I remembered how intoxicated I was with his body. He was magnificent. And I would gladly take him again. “That’s my good boy,” I said as I slipped into the tightness of his orifice. It stretched over my cock like a fine glove. “My good boy knows how to take it like a man,” my voice dripped into his ear as I slammed my hips forward, fucking stifled moans out of him with each thrust of my cock.

His body shook with a combination of lust and rage that was so potent that I could smell it coming off him in powerful waves. I reached around him, wrapping my fist around his cock so that he could fuck it in time with my own thrusts. It was really the least I could do, all things considered. Seemingly too quickly, I felt the powerful muscles of his ass clench around me, pulling an orgasm from my cock so strong that it almost unseated me. In the next moment, my hand was slick with his seed, and I collapsed on top of him as he fell into the sand, still panting wildly into the shirt between his teeth.

Once I caught my breath and pulled out, I tugged the shirt out of his mouth and ran my fingers through his hair to see if he was all right. He did not try to bite me, seemingly resigned to his fate of being denied my blood. I left his hands bound and hollered for Grimaud.

“You and I shall have words later, gnat,” I told my Grigori, “but right now, I want you to feed Aramis.”

“You mean..?”

“Yes, pest. I want you to let him feed on you.”

“Hades’ balls, Kyrios! Can he at least put on a bib? Monsieur Aramis is such a messy eater.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you disobeyed my command.”

I pulled Aramis, who was still looking at me as if somehow I was the one who was outrageously mad, up from the sand and pushed him into Grimaud’s arms.

“Don’t eat the whole servant, Aramis. He is, technically, mortal. Although, I’m sure quite delicious.” 

I laughed and abandoned the two of them on the beach. I wondered where I could find a quiet spot so I could go and meditate for a while. Enlightenment wasn't just going to happen without proper effort.

***

The sea had calmed by sunset. As I watched the waves from my perch upon a rock, I reflected about how much the tranquillity of the waters resembled the tranquillity that my godling appeared to have reached. That was not the fatal calm of the frozen lake that I had seen him fall into; that was not the languid calm of lassitude and phlegm that had stuck to him when first we met. This was something new, something different, and it unsettled me.

Athos had been my rock upon which I had built my church. I glanced down, at the rock upon which I was sitting, and contemplated the jagged edges and slick slopes. It was slippery under my feet and I had cut myself, tumbled and almost lost my balance when I had climbed it. Ever since I had found Athos again on the shores of the Loire, I had feared that the rock had begun to crumble.

I had found him again on the shores of his native land, stronger and greater than ever. Restored to his former glory – the glory of days long gone. Of days when he and his demi-divine brethren walked this Earth as leaders and heroes. The man I had met on the battlefield of Wallachia had already been worn down by millennia of human strife and toil, of a life that was beneath him. Only now did I realise that I had never known _Athos_ ; not the man who had been shaped by divine and royal hands in his youth. Like the statue of a god, which he so much resembled, human hands had befouled him: in the same way that their touch leaves stains upon marble sculptures. They had chipped off pieces of his soul and left him half a halfgod.

Death had been his salvation. For from death had he risen a golden idol. It was I who had killed him and it was I who had restored him. I was his resurrection and his life.

Why, then did he not love me?

***

We were aboard a ship, just sailing past Malta, where I recalled Aramis had spent a good period of time during my sojourn under the sea. He had been leaning over the railing, with his cloaked back turned to me, but I could tell from his posture that he never did develop a liking for seafaring. Poor chyortik was contemplating the waves again in such a way that made me wonder if he wasn’t going to return his last meal to the sea.

I walked up behind him and placed my hand on his shoulder. He tensed and, after a brief pause, turned to face me. He was wearing a brave mask, but underneath his finely stretched skin I could see the simmering sea of emotions. Rage, sadness, defiance… love.

“The winds are quite favorable today,” I said, “and the captain tells me we’ll make port by sun down if this weather continues.”

“The weather,” his eyes glimmered and his lips twitched. “Have you really nothing to say to me beyond polite conversation?”

I picked up his hand and pressed it to my breast.

“Aramis, I cherish your heart, and I treasure your friendship.”

He laughed, but I had been wise enough to recognize it for the knee-jerk defensive maneuver that it had been. I could see him very clearly from my point of novel sobriety. Before, I would have taken offense and let his hand drop, but instead I had pressed it more firmly.

“Aramis, I…”

“Don’t. You don’t have to speak.” 

He was right: what I wasn’t saying was loud enough as it was. What would be the use of more superfluous words? His eyes spoke volumes for the both of us, accusing and cursing. _You don’t love me anymore._

“I know why you left,” I said, still holding his hand against my heart. It twitched in my grasp but he let it lie there.

“I was tired of us hurting each other,” he whispered against the wind.

“I clung to you too much, too desperately.” His eyes met mine and I took advantage of the fact that he was listening to me, despite the boiling rage that made him shiver though the winds had been warm. “What you and I had - it was unsustainable. The times had changed and you had changed with them. We _needed_ to change. But I fought against the waves of change like a drowning man swimming against the current. And in the end I still drowned.”

“And now?”

“And now, I am back.” He pulled his hand away but remained close to me.

“You are changed,” he spoke, facing land so that his eyes would not confirm what he felt in his heart. I had changed, but only on the inside.

“I am sane.” I was the sanest I had ever been since he’d met me. Elysium had healed my wounds, including those inflicted by our love.

A ghost of the saddest smile fled across his visage and then the wind blew his hair in his face, obscuring his features from me.

“What do we do?” he asked, although I could not be sure whether he was addressing me or the gods in that moment. Perhaps a little of both.

I placed my hand on his arm again and his body gently swayed towards mine. Magnetism. There was still that, even in my newly rediscovered sanity I could still feel it, the indelible reality of our attraction.

“Whatever you need,” I said and tipped his chin towards me so that our eyes could meet again. “Tell me what you need.”

***

What I needed? I no longer knew what it was. I’d thought I needed _him_ , for a life without him was inconceivable. But as we sailed past Malta, I remembered those long years, decades, when I didn’t even think about him, engaged as I was in mundane concerns. I had crossed the Seven Seas without him. I could walk the Earth without him as well.

A sharp stab in my heart reminded me of the day I had been fatally shot. I had recovered from the wound (with Athos’ blood). (The blood that he denied me now, for ever since he had returned from Elysium, he had donned an Achillean armour of invulnerability which my fangs could not penetrate). I would recover again. The blood of his servant, willingly given, sustained me for the time being. Soon, we would leave the ship and I would go hunting again, unfettered by the restraint of Athos’ disapproval and Athos’ love, of which I had striven to prove myself worthy.

Without the censure of Athos’ mocking gaze and gentle entreaties, I could be anything. I could join the Jesuits and work my way up through the ranks until I was seated on the golden throne, the successor of _Petros_ : the rock upon which Jesus had built his church.

“Let me get off the ship in Italy,” I told Athos. “I’m going to go to Padua.”

He smiled at me, serenely. “If that is what you need-”

“It is.”

“Good.”

The ship rolled and I swayed into his arms which closed around me. For a moment, I let myself fall into the comfort of his embrace. Was it comforting still? Not to him, for he did not linger in my arms like he used to do. Not to me, for once arousal ebbed away in the wake of our congress, I would find myself on edge. My body only half-satiated and craving his blood, my soul longing for more than he could give me. His body was as magnificent as ever, and his touch was masterful.

It was not enough.

Desire had brought us together – marrow-deep passion that washed over us both from the moment we had first touched. But it was love that had kept us tethered to each other. That bond was severed. It had long been frayed, and his death had been the final cut that separated our hearts from each other. For no matter how much I longed for him to come back, it was just his body that had been returned to me. I had broken his heart and his love for me had leaked out.

My love for him was contained. I had put it away into a cold dark chamber in the depth of my own heart, where it lay frozen to stone. I could feel its weight, but it did not burn me. One day, perhaps, it would melt. I shuddered at the mere thought of it, for I remembered its scorching heat well. Like molten gold poured into the condemned man’s throat, it would immolate me from the inside.

I would not let that happen.

“Is this goodbye then?” Athos asked softly, with his mouth at the side of my neck. My treacherous skin shivered under the brush of his breath and lips.

“I think so,” I replied, just as softly, and dragged my tongue over the row of my teeth until I felt blood well up under the pressure of my fang.

“You will always be my dearest friend, Aramis.”

“I know.” Oh, he was offering me his friendship in all sincerity. Today, like all those centuries ago, he appeared to think that I was nothing but the sweet little flittermouse who could be safely released to roam the world unchecked and unrestrained. I snorted with laughter and he pressed his lips to the side of my neck.

“Would you like me to take you below deck?”

“If you wish it.”

“I wish it.” He spoke the magic words in that calm, quiet tone that reverberated through my skin, and the spell was cast.

I came up from my Athos-induced haze the moment his hand cupped my hipbone and the pressure of his fingers indicated that he wished me to turn over on my stomach for him. I opened my eyes and encountered the ebony-black gaze that roamed over my body. He was kneeling between my legs, palming my cock like he always did, with firm, steady strokes.

My hand alighted on his and for the span of several breaths, we both watched my cock disappear in our joint grip. Then, his gaze snapped back to mine and he raised his eyebrows in silent command.

“Like this.” I reached for his hair with my free hand and pulled him down. “Do it like this.” I licked across his mouth and probed for the pulse of his blood with the tip of my tongue.

For a moment, he frowned in confusion, and then he thrust his cock between my legs, nestling it against my arse. I shifted away.

“Your hand, Athos.” My grip in his hair tightened and he jerked his head back, like a nervous horse.

“Will it be enough?” he inquired, solicitous as ever for my wellbeing, and I laughed.

“I’m sure it will, my dear friend,” I said, emulating the polite tone in which he had been addressing me ever since his return. “You are aware how deeply I admire your beautiful hands, are you not?”

“Aramis-” he dithered, and I thrust my hips up to urge him on. I unwrapped my legs from where they lay around his hips, pressed them together, and his cock slid deeply between my sweat-slick thighs. Athos’ lips parted around a soft moan. I raised my head and kissed his lower lip, sucking it in between my lips and teeth. He moaned again and his tongue slithered into my mouth, dragging over the tips of my fangs.

“Careful,” I hissed, pulling back. “You might prick yourself. And then what?”

“Don’t you want me to kiss you, Aramis?”

His timbre carried so much sincere regret that I took pity on him and blunted the edge of my own voice. “Be careful.” I flashed my fangs at him. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

Athos laughed, leaned in and pushed my mouth open with his lips. My body jolted into his and my composure slipped as I melted into him, into the soft touch and insistent pressure. Nectar and ambrosia – their taste was still fresh on his breath and lips, not concealed under the tartness of wine that had coated his tongue for many years. He was kissing me deeply, urgently, as if he meant it, and his hand crawled up my flank, fingers catching against my ribs, caressing the curve of my collarbone and meandering through my hair. He rested upon me with his full weight, crushing my cock beneath his stomach as he fucked himself between my legs, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. This was too much, feeling him like this, hard and sweat-slick against me, as desperate for my touch as I was for his. I dug my fingers into his arse and pulled him down, and Athos groaned into the kiss. I forced my eyes open and saw that his brow was furrowed in concentration as he attempted to devour me with his mouth – that beautiful, generous mouth that I had loved and missed and that I would miss again.

I had survived it before. That last night in Paris, when I had come to him at night and snuck away before cock-crow: I had used my body to say goodbye then, just as he was using his mouth to say goodbye now. I clenched my thighs around his cock and his whole body spasmed and slammed into me, knocking the wind out of my lungs. Lightheaded, dizzy, I clung to his shoulders, digging my nails into the side of his neck, to the spot where I must not dig in my teeth. What had happened to us? We had had eternity. Now, all we had left was one night.

Athos’ hips jerked desperately and his teeth collided with mine as his rhythm faltered and his release washed over us both, coating my thighs. His hand was back on my cock and the slick pressure pushed me off the precipice and into the breaking waves of fleeting, insensate bliss. I blinked against the darkness that had enveloped me and saw the line of his cheekbone, obscured by damp hair, and one dark eye, as he pressed his forehead to my temple.

I turned my head and kissed him on the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you.”

A strangled laugh, as he was struggling to catch his breath. Now that arousal had ebbed away, I felt the burden of his body and pushed him off me. Athos' hand lingered on my chestbone and I picked it up and kissed his fingertips as I rose from the bed.

“You should sleep.”

“What about you?”

“I don’t sleep,” I said, crossed the cabin and sank down onto the other cot. “You know that.” I pulled the sheets around me and began to wipe sweat and seed off my skin.

“Good night, my dear friend,” Athos said, his voice hoarse and already heavy with sleep.

I smiled. I waited for his breath to even out, and then I rose again, dressed myself soundlessly, picked up my boots and left the cabin. I climbed on deck and sank against the railing, lifting my face towards Porthos’ Auntie Selene. Her expression struck me as rather more benevolent than that of Porthos’ father, who had mocked me ever since I had arrived in Greece.

Tomorrow, I would go on land on the western coast of Italy. I would leave Athos to continue his voyage towards France, while I myself would travel north on horseback. The sea was making me sick, I had enough of her capricious back and forth and the fathomless abyss where monsters dwelled, untamed and untameable. The pagan Roman gods had been defeated by the One God of the Roman Church, and it was to that unconquerable power that I would pledge myself forthwith.

***

I had said goodbye to Aramis in Italy. He seemed determined never to set foot in Chartres again, and I, for one, didn’t blame him. Grimaud had made the pilgrimage back there alone to retrieve my possessions, or rather, the comte de La Fère’s possessions, for I would retain his name and title for some time.

“We will see each other again,” I told my revenant, “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Except to Blois,” he smiled at me sadly.

“Except to Blois.” And I quickly added, “Where I hope I can expect you to visit me.”

I picked up his hand and kissed it gallantly before getting back into the boat that would take me back to my frigate. That time, his smile and his laughter were genuine and free of melancholy.

“You’ll pay for that,” he threatened, ever resentful at the slightest sign of being treated like a lady.

“I’m counting on it.”

He was then and he would always be the most beautiful boy I’d ever met. After Alexander’s death in Babylon, after my penultimate resurrection two thousand years ago, I had resolved to be done with mortals. To be done with beautiful boys. I had perfected the art of detachment, of foiling my own amorous ambitions before they had chance to take root. I had pawned Antinous off onto Hadrian and I had been right to do so, for when that boy died and rendered an Emperor of the World mad with grief, my own heart had remained intact. Beauty was ephemeral and mortals were prone to mortality. But not Aramis. He would always remain: my Hyacinthus.

Grimaud and I had moved into Bragelonne quietly and without resistance from either the help or the local gentry. What little staff there was left at the château had begun to prepare for winter. I had taken up residence in the same bedroom where over a decade ago I had made love to Aramis for the first time since my maritime return. I had the portrait of Adèle de Bragelonne moved to a different room, not wanting to look at the family jewel shining on her finger. As to the rest, I only had good memories of my time there.

Grimaud had begun on a long and tiresome tirade about the responsibilities of being landed gentry, which for some reason he insisted on carrying on in gestures despite the fact that we were alone. He must have been still miffed that I had let Aramis make a meal of him.

“You may speak,” I told him. He scowled at me in response. “In fact, you may speak whenever you wish it, Grimaud. The moratorium on Olympian lip is hereby lifted.”

“Kyrios? What has gotten into you?”

“Nothing. I’m content.” I smiled at him and spread my arms, suddenly enjoying the feeling of life and virility pulsating through my veins. My blood, my renewed and reclaimed blood, it belonged to no one but me again. “Now then, how much do you know about tulips?”

**Author's Note:**

> Unlike Alex, we don't get paid per word. If you're here in Volume III, please propitiate us with comments!


End file.
